Remote Exposure: A Guide to Hiking and Climbing Photography Book Review

Remote Exposure: A Guide to Hiking and Climbing Photography by Alexandre Buisse is a 157-page hard-cover book devoted entirely to mountain photography. This makes it a refreshingly unique book which covers a subject which remains inaccessible without considerable effort for most photographers. Mountain photography has its own challenges, including a good amount of planning ahead. While this book does skim general photography topics, assuming basic skills from its readers, it covers everything from the choice of gear to workflow.

Remote Exposure, published by Rocky Nook, is the expression of Alexandre Buisse's life-long passion for mountain-climbing and photography. Having climb countless mountains, he presents the culmination of this experiences in a well thought-out book with truly stunning images of mountains like few people have seen before.

To bring photography into the demanding context of mountain-climbing, Remote Exposure starts with basics of cameras, lenses, carrying systems, batteries and memory, followed by shooting techniques and specifics for the harsh environment. It continues with artistic aspects and discipline-specific issues before concluding with advanced techniques including HDR capture and panoramic images.

This book is well-written and logically organized. Its easily understandable text is accompanied by powerfully and evocative images.

Remote Exposure is available for purchase from Amazon.

Remote Exposure is aimed at photographers interested in tackling mountains with their cameras. Members of the target audience should neither be complete novices at climbing nor at photography. Climbing itself is not explained in this book but photography beyond the most basic concepts is.

This book resounds of Alexandre Buisse's experiences and is written in a very personal style. The author is clearly passionate about mountain photography and excited to share his experiences through this medium. While reading Remote Exposure, one can feel this throughout each chapter which makes all the opinions appear completely genuine.

After a brief introduction on motivations for mountain photography, the book is splits into 6 chapters. The first one, Choosing the Right Equipment, covers all the photography equipment needed for taking pictures while climbing or hiking, It covers the choice of cameras, both digital and film, lenses, carrying systems, batteries, memory and additional items such as tripod, lighting, filters and laptops. Careful consideration is given for each piece of equipment depending on the type of climbs being undertaken.

Chapter two is about shooting in adverse conditions. Mountains can indeed be inhospitable and their terrain unforgiving. Extreme weather can occur at high altitudes with nowhere for you or your camera to take shelter. Covered in this chapter are cold temperatures, snow, water, condensation, dust and safety. Exposure issues are covered in the last sub-section of chapter two.

The third chapter, entitled Creating Powerful Images, is about the craft and artistry. It is mostly about inspiration and immortalizing it in photographs. Starting with the climb and the desire to share it via photography, the author discusses how to capture key moments of the experience.

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Chapter 4 covers discipline-specific considerations. It is divided into 4 disciplines: Camping, Hiking, Technical Climbing and Mountaineering. These sections mostly cover the composition and the story-telling aspects for sharing the unique aspects of these disciplines. For the more difficult ones, additional consideration in terms of planning and execution are given.

Chapter 5 is called Advanced Techniques and, as its title implies, is highly specific to photography techniques as applied to mountain photography. Low Light and Night Photography are covered first. With a clear sky, mountains can be an excellent platform for astrophotography, assuming a suitable support is available. Next is Panorama photography. The grandiose views from the top of mountains can sometimes only be done justice using such wide sweeping images. HDR images are covered in their own section, as is video briefly.

The final chapter, Closing Thoughts, covers ethics of photography and safety of climbing, wrapping up the topic of mountain photography quite well.

Remote Exposure: A Guide to Hiking and Climbing Photography is an excellent book covering a seldom-explored topic and written by an accomplished and passionate climber. The text is a breeze to read and accompanying images are spectacular. For those interested adding photography to their climbing, this is certainly a great read.